James Galloway - Honor and Blood

Keritanima was family. Allia was family.

Tarrin seemed to have a great many families. He had his own natural family, Eron and Elke Kael and his sister Jenna, who were in Ungardt right now to keep themselves out of the chaos going on in Sulasia. Something he was very relieved that they had done. He also had his sisters, Keritanima and Allia, who were all but accepted as sisters by his parents and natural sister. They had never met Keritanima, but his parents had met Allia, had come to know her and love her, and who was welcomed at the Kael hearth at any time. Being bound to Allia, that made them part of her clan, though he had never met any other Selani. The fact that he was brother to a Selani and had to cross Selani lands would not help him. He would only be welcomed by Allia's clan, and only if Allia were with him to introduce him. The Selani would treat him as an enemy, whether he had the brands or not, and that was something for which he was prepared. He also had his Were-cat bond-mother, Triana, who served as his mother and protector among the Were-cat society, and whom he also loved. She was much like his natural mother, direct and outspoken, and he loved her just as much as he did Elke Kael. Though Triana was his mother, her daughters were of no relation to him.

That fact made him somewhat relieved. Jesmind, Triana's daughter, was the one that had turned him Were. They had had a very stormy relationship, full of both love and hate, and for some reason he could never forget her. When he thought of a female, he thought of Jesmind almost every time. Tarrin had very complicated feelings for the fiery-haired Were-cat, running from fascination and intense attraction to furious hatred. He had been attracted to her from the first time they met, but actions both of them undertook caused them to be enemies. That was when he hated Jesmind, and thinking about the times she tried to kill him still made his blood burn a little bit. He figured he felt that way because of the way he felt about her. Tarrin was still attracted to Jesmind, intensely so, and her turning on him had been a violation of his feelings all the way to the core. Even now, he yearned to see her again, though he wasn't sure if he'd kiss her or try to strangle her if they met face to face. The fiery intensity of their feelings for one another had caused more than a few rather complicated situations during their brief yet tumultuous time together. She had tried to kill him more than once, but she had also seduced him on two separate occasions. She was very forward with her feelings, and hadn't held anything back from him. Jesmind was just as attracted to him as he was to her, and despite the rocks they had stumbled over, they had parted more or less on amicable terms. Jesmind had had to leave, though she wouldn't tell him why. He knew that whatever it was, it had to be important for her to abandon him. At that time, she had taken responsibility for his learning to be a Were-cat and his well-being, and Jesmind was never one to shirk a responsibility. If it had been serious enough for her to leave him, then he was satisfied that her reasons were good enough. He had been a little mad at her for leaving him alone, though. Even when they hated each other, her proximity had given him a very strange feeling of security. She had been his bond-mother at that time, and it was like the child within was responding to the presence of mother, even though he had hated her. That part of him took comfort that she would be close to him, and he hadn't appreciated how much it helped soothe him until after she was gone.

Jesmind had managed to capture his interest, even now, but thinking of her made him give a moment of thought to Mist. Mist was another Were-cat, a Were-cat whose feral nature was so severe that she wouldn't even trust her own kind. Her mental state had come about because she had been wounded long ago, wounded in a way that made her barren, and her inability to have a child of her own had hardened her to the rest of the world. Were-cats were beings grounded in instinct, and in the females of their kind there was no instinct more powerful than the instinct to reproduce and care for the young. The denial of that most primal of instincts had probably been one of the reasons she was so intensely feral, being denied the one thing she felt she was born to do, taken away from her by the hatred and anger of humans. But Tarrin had healed her of her barren condition, an act of impulsive compassion, an act that had caused the feral Were-cat to reach out to him and place her trust in him, the first time in centuries she had placed her trust in another. Tarrin had felt so sorry for her. She had been so tortured inside. He had such compassion for her that he had agreed to father a child for her, her own child, the one thing that would make her life complete. His human morality had been a bit outraged at the idea, it still was, but even it could not deny the lonely Were-cat the one thing in this world she had wanted above all others.

Were-cat males didn't have a hand in the raising of the young. After making her pregnant, she had left him, left him to return to her home to prepare for the coming of her child. Tarrin hoped that she was well, and that the child would bring everything she hoped it would bring. After all she had suffered through, she needed some happiness in her life. Mist trusted him, something he was very proud about, something that he appreciated for its great value. He hoped she was well.

The sun was nearly fully above the horizon. Sarraya groaned slightly and stretched her arms, then sat up and yawned languidly. When she did so, he could see her bare back, a back that looked unusual with no diaphonous, multicolored wings attached to them. She had two small ridges on each side of her spine, where her wings attached so they wouldn't hit her back when they fluttered, and the slits where her wings had been were still raw, open wounds. He worried about them getting infected, but she had blown off his concern with that same careless frivolity that she used for anything that didn't interest her. She turned and looked up at him quietly, then her tiny, pretty face broke into a bright smile. Amber eyes gazed up at him, glowing in the morning sun, and he returned her gaze calmly.

"Tarrin," she hummed. "You should have woke me up. It's already past sunrise."

"You needed to rest," he answered in the unspoken manner of the Cat, a language of silent intent that all felines used to communicate with one another, a language that the Faerie could understand. "They needed to rest as well."

"Who?"

"Them," he answered, nodding his head towards the southeast. "They can't keep up if their horses start dying ten minutes after they start moving."

Sarraya laughed in her piping, very high-pitched voice, a voice created by the fact that she was only about a span tall. The sprite could squeak like a mouse if she wished to do so, her voice capable of reaching such high tones that no human or creature human sized could manage to find. "You're certainly caring today," she grinned. "I didn't know you cared about them."

"Not them. I do feel a bit sorry for their horses, though."

Sarraya laughed again, standing up. "Well, let me conjure up something to eat, and then we can move. You hungry?"

He shook his head. "I caught a couple of mice before dawn."

The hunting had calmed him. In cat form, the instincts dominated him, and so he found absolutely nothing wrong with stalking, killing, and eating mice and other prey suitable for a cat, or doing any of the other little things that cats did. He had a particular fondness for squirrel, though none lived in the savannahs of Yar Arak. The rhythmic ritual of hunting had caused him to concentrate on it, to distract himself from his worries, and it had made him feel better.

And those strange long-tailed mice were rather tasty.